Garland Jeffreys Sings The City

@ Highline Ballroom – Show @ 8PM (Doors @ 6PM)

You could print up a list of the Brooklyn native’s catalogue, tack it to the wall, step back ten paces, and throw a dart, and you’d be almost guaranteed to hit another great New York City song — The New Yorker

Garland Jeffreys has always found New York City his most enduring inspiration. This special show by “one of New York’s rock and roll treasures” (The New Yorker) and “the quintessential New York City musician” (East Hampton Star) will be an evening of the songs that those who know Garland love most. The New York Daily News called him “The Bard of Brooklyn” and The Village Voice voted “Wild in the Streets” # 7 on its list of “The 60 Best Songs Ever Written about New York City,” saying “Garland Jeffreys recorded ‘Wild in the Streets’ with swamp-boogie grand wizard Dr. John, but its hot-summer-asphalt beat and back-alley-hiss chorus are NYC through and through — just like Jeffreys himself. Born in Brooklyn in the 1940s, half black and half Puerto Rican, he went to college with Lou Reed and was an early protégé of John Cale. His rock, soul, and reggae-inflected albums brought him a measure of acclaim in the late 1970s, but even back then Jeffreys was an underrated and underappreciated homegrown virtuoso. Though it was cut in 1973, ‘Wild in the Streets’ didn’t make it onto an album for another four years. That’s fine in retrospect, because as a slice of New York life it has proven timeless. Look at it this way: If you go into a jukebox bar in this town and Garland Jeffreys ain’t on the jukebox, turn around. You’re in the wrong bar.”

This seminal song will be featured in the Baz Luhrmann Netflix series “The Get Down.”

“Garland Jeffreys Sings The City” will feature fan favorites “New York Skyline,” “Coney Island Winter,” and “Mystery Kids” as well as rarely performed originals such as “Roller Coaster Town” and “Streetwise” — and there may even be a new song or two!

For those of you who haven’t yet been to one of Garland’s legendary performances, here’s what you can expect:

Backed by a crack band, Jeffreys bring his great songs, powerful voice and buoyant personality — The New Yorker

A seriously satisfying, high-octane show — Huffington Post

Jeffreys’ live shows, which often cross the line between performance and full-on party — Elmore

Check out this genuine urban poet if you don’t know his work — The Nation

Anyone who’s seen Jeffreys live in the last few years supporting his latest albums — “The King of In Between” 2011 and “Truth Serum” 2013 — and touring around the globe like a hungry young artist half his age would agree that “Jeffreys is one of the few performers who came of commercial age in the era of Bruce Springsteen who can still make that guitar-based, myth-making impulse work as intimate art.” (NPR).